The Dust Flower Part 30

"Yes; he understands all that. But, don't you see? a man in his position couldn't take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours----"

"Unless he pays me for it in cash."

"That's putting it in a nutsh.e.l.l. If you owned a house, for instance, and I wanted it, I'd buy it from you and pay you for it; but I couldn't take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I needed it."

"I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could sell a house when I couldn't sell--myself."

"Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?"

"It'd be selling myself--the way I look at it. When I'm so ready to do what he wants I can't see why he don't let me." She added, tearfully: "Did he tell you about this morning?"

She nodded. "Yes, he told me about that."

"Well, I would have gone then if--if I'd known how to work the door."

"Oh, that's easy enough."

"Do you know?"

"Why, yes."

"Will you show me?"

Miss Walbrook rose. "It's so simple." She continued, as they went toward the door: "You see, Mr. Allerton's mother always kept a lot of valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still, locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front door, my aunt used to tell her, but--" They reached the door itself.

"Now, you see, there's a common lock, a bolt, and a chain----"

Letty explained that she had discovered them already.

"But, you see these two little bra.s.s k.n.o.bs over here? That's the trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would suspect. See?"

She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the morning.

"Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way--and there you are!"

She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and the door being open she pa.s.sed out. She had not intended to go in this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away; and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went down the steps.

Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and wounded. "It's nothing to me," Barbara repeated to herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.

Chapter XVII

It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn't at first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two words, and repeating them uneasily: "_n.o.blesse oblige!_"

Nevertheless, on the principle that all's fair in love and war, she fought this off. "Either she must go or I must." That she herself should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her, and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more than that to the situation.

There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why shouldn't the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: "_n.o.blesse oblige!_"

She began to question the honesty which in Letty's presence had convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying all round the compa.s.s. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....

Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she hadn't known....

She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty's taking desperate steps--if indeed she hadn't taken them long ago--and yet she herself didn't want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret of the door was one which she couldn't help finding out in any case.

She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: "_n.o.blesse oblige! n.o.blesse oblige!_"

"I must get rid of it," she said to herself, as Wildgoose admitted her. "I've got to be on the safe side. I can't have it on my mind."

Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves she was answered by Steptoe. "This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I should like to speak to--to the young woman."

Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook's departure answered with resentful politeness. "I'll speak to Mrs. Allerton, miss. She _may_ be aible to come to the telephone."

"Ye-es?" came later, in a feeble, teary voice.

"This is Miss Walbrook again. I'm sorry to trouble you the second time."

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I left, that I hope you won't--won't _use_ the information I gave you as I was leaving--at any rate not at once."

"Do you mean the door?"

"Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something in a hurry----"

"It'll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all."

"Oh, I don't see that. In any case, I'd--I'd think it over. Perhaps we could have another talk about it, and then----"

Something was said which sounded like a faint, "Very well," so that Barbara put up the receiver.

Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to appear that "he didn't think much of her!" No matter what he had said, the girl had been able to make these inferences. What was more, these inferences might be true. Perhaps he _didn't_ think much of her!

Perhaps he only _thought_ he was in love with her! The idea was so terrible that it stilled her, as approaching seismic storm will still the elements. She moved about the drawing-room, taking off her gloves, her veil, her hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she was afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside that table, not knowing what to do next, or where to go, when Wildgoose came to the door to announce, "Mr. Allerton."

"I've seen her." Without other form of greeting, or moving from beside the table, she picked up her gloves, threw them down again, picked them up again, threw them down again, with the nervous action of the hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. "I didn't believe her--quite."

"But you didn't disbelieve her--wholly?"

"It's a difficult case."

"I've got you into an awful sc.r.a.pe, Barbe."

She threw down the gloves with special vigor. "Oh, don't begin on that. The sc.r.a.pe's there. What we have to find is the way out."

"Well, do you see it any more clearly?"

"Do you?"